Separate Car Act

Last updated

The Separate Car Act (Act 111 [1] ) was a law passed by the Louisiana State Legislature in 1890 which required "equal, but separate" train car accommodations for Blacks and Whites. [2] An unsuccessful challenge to this law culminated in the United States Supreme Court decision of Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896, which upheld the constitutionality of state laws requiring racial segregation.

Contents

History

The Reconstruction period and its subsequent end led to a discussion among both Blacks and Whites in the South how to interpret "equal rights" and the new Reconstruction Amendments. J. P. Weaver, a Black preacher, had advised Blacks to accept separate accommodations if they were "first-class". [3] "But if there is no such accommodation set apart for you, and you are crowded upon by base and reckless beings, depriving you of all that tends to your happiness ... excuse yourself for being colored, and walk in another car and cabin". [4]

Following Reconstruction and the withdrawal of federal troops from the South, the Democratic Party came back to power. There began a process of "renegotiating the definitions of 'equal rights' in debates over post-Civil War amendments". [4] Legislators proposed the Separate Car Bill which segregated Blacks from Whites in separate but equal conditions on train cars. [2] Violations of the law were a misdemeanor crime punishable by a fine of at most $25 or twenty days jail time. [2]

The law did not go uncontested through the legislature. Republican legislator Henry Demas from St John the Baptist Parish challenged the bill as coming from the "ranks of Democratic Senators who pandered to the needs of the lower classes". [5] To him, the bill was not a product of upper class white citizens but those with no "social or moral standing in the community". [5]

Despite some opposition, the Separate Car Act passed the Louisiana State Senate by 23 to 6. [5]

Reception

Paul Trevigne, a Louisianan African American, said the law was not practical. He felt that this "force class legislation" would fail in the near term because it did not take into account the lives of people living in a cosmopolitan Louisiana. "[F]uture generations would be ashamed", he said, to see such laws on the books. [6]

Although most Blacks opposed the law, it had strong support from Whites. An editorial in The Daily Picayune of New Orleans spoke of "almost unanimous demand on the party of White people of the State for the enactment of the law" which would "increase the comfort for the traveling public". [7] The editorial also argued that it would put Louisiana in line with other Southern states. [7]

Testing the law

In 1891, under Louis Martinet, [2] a group of activists from New Orleans set up the Citizens Committee to Test the Constitutionality of the Separate Car Act in order to challenge the constitutionality of the law. [8]

The first case the committee decided to test was Daniel Desdunes, son of Citizens Committee co-founder Rodolphe Desdunes, in 1892. On February 24, Desdunes bought a first-class ticket, boarded a designated White car on the Louisiana and Nashville Railroad from New Orleans to Montgomery, Alabama. The destination of another state was chosen specifically because of the belief that it violated the Commerce Clause. Desdune's case never went to trial because the Louisiana Supreme Court ruled on May 25 in the unrelated Abbott v. Hicks that the Separate Car Act did not apply to interstate passengers, [2] rendering the test moot.

For their second attempt the group found Homer Plessy, a mostly white "octoroon", who was still considered a "negro" under Louisiana law. [9] On June 7, 1892 Plessy purchased a first-class ticket to take him from New Orleans to Covington on the East Louisiana Railroad, this time both destinations being within the state. Plessy boarded the "white carriage" where the conductor had been informed ahead of time that the light-skinned Plessy was legally Black. The conductor was told by Plessy that he was colored and the conductor had him arrested and charged with violation of the law. The case was brought before John Howard Ferguson—the same judge who had argued the law could not apply to interstate travel in Abbott v. Hicks. Plessy's lawyers argued on the basis 13th and 14th Amendments that their client's rights had been violated. Ferguson ruled that Louisiana was free to regulate such actions and that Plessy was guilty as charged. The Louisiana Supreme Court upheld this decision. Finally, the case ended in the Supreme Court of the United States in Plessy v. Ferguson with the judgment being upheld, leading to the judicial sanction of "separate but equal". [8] This situation lasted for decades.

Notes

  1. ↑ Hasian Jr., p. 12
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 Margo, p. 68
  3. ↑ Hasian Jr., pp. 3–5
  4. 1 2 Hasian Jr., p. 5
  5. 1 2 3 Hasian Jr., p. 9
  6. ↑ Hasian Jr., p. 10
  7. 1 2 Hasian Jr., p. 11
  8. 1 2 Packard, p. 74
  9. ↑ Packard, pp. 73–4

Related Research Articles

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954), was a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in which the Court ruled that U.S. state laws establishing racial segregation in public schools are unconstitutional, even if the segregated schools are otherwise equal in quality. The decision partially overruled the Court's 1896 decision Plessy v. Ferguson, which had held that racial segregation laws did not violate the U.S. Constitution as long as the facilities for each race were equal in quality, a doctrine that had come to be known as "separate but equal". The Court's decision in Brown paved the way for integration and was a major victory of the civil rights movement, and a model for many future impact litigation cases.

Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896), was a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in which the Court ruled that racial segregation laws did not violate the U.S. Constitution as long as the facilities for each race were equal in quality, a doctrine that came to be known as "separate but equal". The decision legitimized the many state laws re-establishing racial segregation that had been passed in the American South after the end of the Reconstruction era (1865–1877).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Separate but equal</span> Legal doctrine used for racial segregation in the United States

Separate but equal was a legal doctrine in United States constitutional law, according to which racial segregation did not necessarily violate the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which nominally guaranteed "equal protection" under the law to all people. Under the doctrine, as long as the facilities provided to each "race" were equal, state and local governments could require that services, facilities, public accommodations, housing, medical care, education, employment, and transportation be segregated by "race", which was already the case throughout the states of the former Confederacy. The phrase was derived from a Louisiana law of 1890, although the law actually used the phrase "equal but separate".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Edward Douglass White</span> Chief justice of the United States from 1910 to 1921

Edward Douglass White Jr. was an American politician and jurist from Louisiana. White was a U.S. Supreme Court justice for 27 years, first as an associate justice from 1894 to 1910, then as the ninth chief justice from 1910 until his death in 1921. White is known for formulating the Rule of Reason standard of antitrust law.

Homer Adolph Plessy was an American shoemaker and activist, best known as the plaintiff in the United States Supreme Court decision Plessy v. Ferguson. He staged an act of civil disobedience to challenge one of Louisiana's racial segregation laws and bring a test case to force the U.S. Supreme Court to rule on the constitutionality of segregation laws. The Court decided against Plessy. The resulting "separate but equal" legal doctrine determined that state-mandated segregation did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution as long as the facilities provided for both black and white people were putatively "equal". The legal precedent set by Plessy v. Ferguson lasted into the mid-20th century, until a series of landmark Supreme Court decisions concerning segregation, beginning with Brown v. Board of Education in 1954.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Straight University</span>

Straight University, after 1915 Straight College, was a historically black college that operated between 1868 and 1934 in New Orleans, Louisiana. After struggling with financial difficulties, it was merged with New Orleans University to form Dillard University.

Williams v. Mississippi, 170 U.S. 213 (1898), is a United States Supreme Court case that reviewed provisions of the 1890 Mississippi constitution and its statutes that set requirements for voter registration, including poll tax, literacy tests, the grandfather clause, and the requirement that only registered voters could serve on juries. The plaintiff, Henry Williams, claimed that Mississippi’s voting laws were upheld with the intent to disenfranchise African Americans, thus violating the Fourteenth Amendment. The U.S. Supreme Court did not find discrimination in the state's laws because, even though the laws made discrimination possible, the laws themselves did not discriminate against African Americans. The court found that any discrimination toward African Americans was performed by the administrative officers enforcing the law and that there was no judicial remedy for this kind of discrimination.

Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada, 305 U.S. 337 (1938), was a United States Supreme Court decision holding that states which provided a school to white students had to provide in-state education to blacks as well. States could satisfy this requirement by allowing blacks and whites to attend the same school or creating a second school for blacks.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">McDonogh Three</span>

The McDonogh Three is a nickname for the three girls who desegregated McDonogh 19 Elementary School, in New Orleans. Even though segregated schools had been illegal since the Brown v. Board of Education case in 1954, no states in the American Deep South had taken action to integrate their schools. Leona Tate, Gail Etienne, and Tessie Prevost had all attended the black-only schools in their neighborhood, until November 14, 1960, when they arrived at McDonogh No. 19, a previously all-white segregated school. On that fateful morning, the girls were escorted by United States Federal Marshals wearing yellow armbands to execute the mission of school integration. Leona Tate, Tessie Prevost, and Gail Etienne lived in the lower 9th Ward of New Orleans, a neighborhood where black and white people lived separately by block.

Constitutional colorblindness is an aspect of United States Supreme Court case evaluation that began with Justice Harlan's dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896. Prior to this, the Supreme Court considered skin color as a determining factor in many landmark cases. Constitutional colorblindness holds that skin color or race is virtually never a legitimate ground for legal or political distinctions, and thus, any law that is "color-conscious" is presumptively unconstitutional regardless of whether its intent is to subordinate a group, or remedy racial discrimination. The concept, therefore, has been brought to bear both against vestiges of Jim Crow oppression, as well as remedial efforts aimed at overcoming such discrimination, such as affirmative action.

Pace v. Alabama, 106 U.S. 583 (1883), was a case in which the United States Supreme Court affirmed that Alabama's anti-miscegenation statute was constitutional. This ruling was rejected by the Supreme Court in 1964 in McLaughlin v. Florida and in 1967 in Loving v. Virginia. Pace v. Alabama is one of the oldest interracial sex court case in America.

John Howard Ferguson was an American lawyer and judge from Louisiana, most famous as the defendant in the Plessy v. Ferguson case.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jim Crow laws</span> State and local laws enforcing racial segregation in the Southern United States

The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws enforcing racial segregation in the Southern United States. Other areas of the United States were affected by formal and informal policies of segregation as well, but many states outside the South had adopted laws, beginning in the late 19th century, banning discrimination in public accommodations and voting. Southern laws were enacted in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by white Southern Democrat–dominated state legislatures to disenfranchise and remove political and economic gains made by African Americans during the Reconstruction period. Jim Crow laws were enforced until 1965.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Charles Erasmus Fenner</span> American judge (1834–1911)

Charles Erasmus Fenner was a Louisiana lawyer who captained a battery in the American Civil War, and later served as a justice of the Louisiana Supreme Court from April 5, 1880, to September 1, 1893. During his service on the court, he hosted a dying Jefferson Davis in his home, and wrote the infamous decision in Plessy v. Ferguson holding that "separate but equal" accommodations could be provided for whites and non-whites, which was upheld by the United States Supreme Court.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rodolphe Desdunes</span> American poet

Rodolphe Lucien Desdunes was an African-American civil rights activist, poet, historian, journalist, and customs officer primarily active in New Orleans, Louisiana.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fuller Court</span> Period of the US Supreme Court from 1888 to 1910

The Fuller Court refers to the Supreme Court of the United States from 1888 to 1910, when Melville Fuller served as the eighth Chief Justice of the United States. Fuller succeeded Morrison R. Waite as Chief Justice after the latter's death, and Fuller served as Chief Justice until his death, at which point Associate Justice Edward Douglass White was nominated and confirmed as Fuller's replacement.

The Comité des Citoyens was a civil rights group made up of African Americans, whites, and Creoles. It is most well known for its involvement in Plessy v. Ferguson. The Citizens' Committee was opposed to racial segregation and was responsible for multiple demonstrations in which African Americans rode on the "white" cars of trains.

Hall v. Decuir, 95 U.S. 485 (1878), was a decision of the Supreme Court of the United States. In Hall, Josephine Decuir, a wealthy woman designated a Creole, sued for racial discrimination she experienced on a steamboat. She was traveling from New Orleans to Pointe Coupee Parish, where she owned a sugar plantation.

Transport and bus boycotts in the United States were protests against the racial segregation of transport services prior to the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which outlawed such forms of discrimination.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">East Louisiana Railroad</span> Defunct railroad in Louisiana and Mississippi, United States

The East Louisiana Railroad, chartered in 1887, was a railroad in Louisiana and Mississippi, United States. It was formed to connect Pearl River, Louisiana, to Covington, Louisiana, and Lake Pontchartrain.

References

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.